a guide to everything gluten free!

Menu

Monthly Archives: November 2015

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving! As we all know, this day is about begin thankful for what we have, but it’s also about one other wonderful thing: food! So I want to talk about this fantastic, totally gluten free bakery, The Happy Mixer. This place is like heaven—it’s a bakery full of delicious treats, and I can eat anything that I want. It is awesome! Every couple of months I go to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s offsite office in Chalfont, PA, and this bakery is literally right next door. It’s a nice treat after a visit to the doctor for me, and I always have to get a bunch of things since I only get to go a few times a year.

On this visit, what I brought home in this lovely little box was a chocolate chip muffin, a cream cheese brownie, a chocolate cake donut, two oatmeal raisin cookies, and a little cookie sandwich with mint frosting. Everything was amazing. First of all, the cream cheese brownie is one of my favorite things from here. It sounded weird to me at first but it turns out I love it! Another favorite of mine is the oatmeal raisin cookies. These are always a regular for me; I can’t leave the bakery without my oatmeal raisin cookies. The muffin was pretty much just a muffin, very soft but nothing super special. I would also say the same for the cookie sandwich, tasty but nothing very exciting. However, these aren’t things that you can get everywhere so it’s nice to have them available. This is the only place I’ve ever gotten donuts from, and they are great! They aren’t quite the same texture as a gluten-filled donut, but I will take what I can get—I love donuts.

On this more recent visit, I brought home a pumpkin muffin, crumb cake, an apple cider donut, and two oatmeal raisin cookies (I did say I never leave here without them, right?). The muffin was great; I loved the flavor and texture. I was a little thrown off by the frosting though, because to me, once you put frosting on it, it’s a cupcake. It was still delicious, but I think I could’ve done without the frosting. I LOVED the donut. The donut itself and the frosting on top were both so yummy. (Keep in mind the muffin and the donut are seasonal, so they aren’t there year-round.) The crumb cake was also great. This is one of those things that I don’t get to have very often because I don’t know any other place that offers it. I would totally recommend any of these baked goods.

One more item from The Happy Mixer that I want to talk about is their baguette. This is kind of amazing, because not many places have freshly baked breads. Yes, technically you could get a packaged baguette from brands like Udi’s and Schar, but why do that when you can have fresh bread??? It’s everything you’d expect from a baguette: crunchy outside and fluffy inside. I found that I liked it better when I warmed it in the toaster oven, because it softens it up a bit. There are so many possibilities with this baguette; you can slice it and make garlic bread, you could make a sandwich out of it, you could make bruschetta. I just love this baguette.

The Happy Mixer is one of my favorite places. It’s always so weird but so fantastic to be in there and have so many options!

Share this:

Like this:

It’s time for my first recipe: gluten free quiche! I love this quiche, and it’s so easy! My grandma actually found the recipe and modified it a little to make it gluten free. I think it was even one of the first gluten free meals she made for me after I was diagnosed. Here you can see the beautifully written recipe:

1. Preheat the oven to 400°
2. Prepare any ingredients for the quiche—for me, this included chopping up the green onions and ham (I just used regular sliced deli ham)3. Whisk together Bisquick, milk, eggs, salt and pepper
4. Combine remaining ingredients with above mixture and pour into a large, greased pie plate
5. Bake in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, or until brown

The before and after

Serve on its own or with a side salad! Accompanying our quiche was a little arugula salad with a simple lemon olive oil dressing and parmesan.

The best thing about this recipe is you can use whatever you have in your fridge. All that went into this besides the three base ingredients was the rest of the shredded cheese I had in the fridge, some deli ham, and a couple of green onions (and obviously a lot of love!). This is probably one of the simplest recipes you can make, and it helps you use up the food in your fridge!

I hope you enjoy this quiche as much as I do!

Share this:

Like this:

I would like to start off by saying this: Chaang Thai has the greatest thai food I have ever eaten in my life. A very bold statement, I know, but this food is fantastic. We discovered this place when we were dropping my brother off at college last year, and we had to find places that I could eat. I had pretty low expectations; I didn’t think West Virginia seemed like the kind of place where I would eat some of the best gluten free food I’ve had. I was proven very, very wrong.

Every time we visit, the Chaang Pad Thai and Chaang Fried Rice are a must-have. We literally cannot go here without getting them. This pad thai is the best pad thai I’ve ever tasted. I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it so delicious, but whatever it is, it’s amazing! Ever since I tried this, I’ve tried pad thai from many other restaurants, but there’s just nothing that can live up to how good this is. As for the fried rice, while I cannot say it is my favorite fried rice ever (it’s a very close race between this and P.F. Chang’s), it is delicious. My favorite thing about it is that they put pineapple chunks in it—the pineapple gives it such a great flavor. I absolutely love both of these dishes!

My dad is a curry kind of guy, so he got the Chaang Coconut Massaman. I tried a bite and thought it was tasty, and my dad calls it “delicious, wonderful, and authentic.”

I love this place so much that when my parents went to visit my brother at WVU for a football game, I had them bring me back a meal from Chaang Thai. Another great thing about the food from here is that it’s just as good as a leftover. Specifically, this is nice for the pad thai, because in my experience rice noodles haven’t really held up well after being reheated.

Overall, I love this place so much. There is no question that this is one of my favorite restaurants ever.